


an offer you can't refuse

by readingnotes



Series: ellick fic [4]
Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Jealousy, Minor Angst, Mutual Pining, Prank Wars, Romance, Super minor - Freeform, but that is a LOW bar, pining!Nick, this might be the fluffiest thing I've written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:23:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28782663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readingnotes/pseuds/readingnotes
Summary: “It’ll be fun,” Nick said on Day Four, then looked at them incredulously. “What? You’ve never taken down the mafia before?” ft. the whole gang, some blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mentions of Tiva, and prank wars.Or: Nick’s jealous, Ellie’s clueless, and the team dismantles a crime family.
Relationships: Ellie Bishop/Nick Torres, Ziva David/Anthony DiNozzo
Series: ellick fic [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1622641
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47





	an offer you can't refuse

**Author's Note:**

> whipped this up pretty quickly. had about half of it done, but I saw the promo for next week's ep, and I knew I had to finish this up. might be contributing to some 18x05/18x06 speculation fics. love the angst. hope y'all enjoy!

So Ellie’s in her corner of the bullpen, and Nick can’t stop looking at her. That’s how it all starts.

She’s wearing one of her cashmere sweaters, and they’ve been working this case for so long that her outfit is three days old. The bags under her eyes can’t be hidden by makeup and the curls in her hair have started to flatten. She has that crease in between her eyebrows that warns him not to bother her with a stupid joke, but that’s never stopped him before.

Ellie’s phone rings, so he freezes in the middle of sauntering over to her, halfway through the bullpen. It’s magic: her eyes widen slightly; the crease disappears; a slow smile spreads, then a grin.

The corners of his mouth start to slip upward, but he fights it down because McGee is at his desk. He’s talking to the local PDs, spelling out one of the long Italian names they’re trying to pin on something, and Tim is eyeing him like a hawk.

“Mark?” Ellie shouts into the phone. 

_ Who? _

“Gimme a sec,” Ellie points to her phone and mouths,  _ I have to take this, sorry, _ and Nick is left gaping at the back of her head as she runs to the break room.

  
  


-

  
  


That happens on Day Six. A recap:

  * Dead sailor in a drive-by shooting in Bethesda. Grab your gear.
  * There was cocaine underneath the bed and piles of cash in the closet in the sailor’s apartment.
  * McGee traced a bank account in the Caymans to a Joey DiGiorno, as in, It’s-not-delivery-it’s-DiGiorno’s.
    * “Do you think he has a cousin named Domino’s?” Ellie asked; and —
    * For the fifth time this month, Nick realizes that he’s in love with Ellie Bishop.
  * Joey does not have a cousin, but he does have a criminal record and an uncle who happens to be the DC/Virginia/Maryland leader of the DiGiorno Family. 
    * “Wow, two states and the capital city,” said McGee. “Impressive.”
  * On top of Nick’s To Do List - Get Gibbs everything on this guy: records, cars, girlfriends, other nieces and nephews, etc., etc.



“It’ll be fun,” Nick said on Day Four, then looked at them incredulously. “What? You've never taken down the mafia before?”

  
  


-

  
  


McGee follows the money to a nightclub in DC (“Do they serve pizza?”; “Nick, please.”), but there’s no way to know when or how the drugs are smuggled into the building, which can only mean one thing: stakeout time.

Stakeouts are the worst. Stakeouts mean unlimited time in a confined place with nothing better to do, the uncomfortable silence of Nick and his thoughts and the little place in his head that teeters between sixteen different names and a glass jar of lake water that hides on the shelf of his apartment.

Right now, a stakeout is the best thing that could ever happen to him.

So, Mark. He can’t exactly Boyle his way into this, not after Bishop nearly chewed his head off because he cancelled her date. 

It’s not helping that Bishop keeps smiling at her phone every two hours, and semi-aggressively types out a text in all caps and extra exclamation marks. (He watches the way her fingers move. He  _ knows _ those are exclamation marks. Like, at least ten of them.)

“Didn’t know dates liked it when you yelled at them all the time.”

“What?” Ellie says, not looking up from her phone.

He puts his feet up on the desk a little too harshly. Ellie wrinkles her nose.

“What could possibly be more important than this very, very interesting stakeout right now? Don’t you see there’s a hooker in front of the club and it’s barely noon? We should report it to Gibbs.”

There’s that sarcastic laugh that’s reserved for him, a quip about not being able to afford her, then back to the invisible Mark he’s heard nothing about.

  
  


-

  
  


_ To: ninja lady, 11:59 _

hey on a stakeout w El. what should i do

_ To: big wuss, 12:05 _

prank war. worked for us.

_ To: ninja lady, 12:06 _

i’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not

  
  


-

  
  


He tells her he’s buying fast food and chips a few blocks away. He asks the cashier for an extra paper bag and places a spring-loaded glitter bomb from the Dollar Tree at the bottom.

  
  


-

  
  


_ To: ninja lady, 14:05 _

success

_ To: big wuss, 14:07 _

ha! watch your six. revenge is tasty, no?

_ To: ninja lady, 14:09 _

i think you mean vengeance is sweet, but check with your husband

  
  


-

Nick returns from a bathroom break and peers left and right. Nothing in the room has changed: Ellie is still finishing the bag of fries. Her head is turned towards the window, and she’s glancing at her phone every few seconds. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but he sort of doesn’t care. His chair hasn’t moved from the computer desk, and there are no booby traps outside the bathroom door or in the hallway.

Okay. The coast is clear.

“Hey, maybe you should check your face one more time, I think you still have glitter — ”

_ Splat. _

His chair explodes in a tidal wave of green and red paint, splattering all over his jeans —  _ gross, it feels so cold _ — and his leather jacket. 

When he looks up, Ellie’s beaming at him from behind her phone, fry stuck in her mouth like a cigarette, green paint smeared across her cheek like evidence. Mercilessly, she sends the video to McGee, Kasie, and Tony.

  
  


-

  
  


_ To: big wuss, 17:25 _

I’m disappointed.

_ To: ninja lady, 17:29 _

yeah, yeah, laugh all you want

this sucks

_ To: big wuss, 17:30 _

Not just the stakeout, I presume?

_ To: ninja lady, 17:32 _

who the hell is Mark

she keeps texting him

it’s distracting me

_ To: ninja lady, 17:35 _

you know, from work

_ To: big wuss, 17:40 _

Oh, Nicholas.

  
  


-

  
  


(Across the Atlantic, in a small apartment in Paris, a married couple compares recent messages.

Ziva clicks her tongue. “I think he might be a bigger wuss than you, Tony.”

“I had better pranks than this guy, okay, at least give me that.”)

  
  


-

  
  


There’s a crowd of seamen lounging around the club. Their voices send pinpricks into his brain, and he can smell the alcohol from the second floor of this building. The bouts of laughter and shouts are interrupted by crunching. Next to him, the foul smell of artificial cheese surrounds Eleanor Bishop. Her fingers are coated with orange dust. Her eyes are laser-focused on the group of men, arms around each other, starting to sing the first bars of “Piano Man”. She licks her lips, and a bit of orange dust is left over at the edge of her mouth. She brings her fingers to her lips to lick them clean.

Nick’s mouth is suddenly dry.

Okay, okay, he needs to focus. Focus. It’ll be easy.

When he finally turns away, the hooker is grabbing one of the men by his tie, who tries to pull away. He rolls his eyes, but before Nick can say, “Playing hard to get, are we?”, the sailor is handing her a thick wad of cash. It’s exchanged for something thickly wrapped in saran plastic wrap, and he jolts out of his seat.

“It  _ was _ the hooker!”

  
  


-

  
  


Nick did not know running that quickly in high heels was possible.

  
  


-

  
  


Ellie’s phone  _ dings _ three times past his limit on the way to the interrogation room. The sound grates against his ears and his eyes can’t roll further up his socket. She doesn’t even notice.

They’re behind the glass, waiting for McGee to question her, when Gibbs walks in. He takes one look at the green paint on Ellie’s cheek and sees the same paint on Nick’s jeans.

Before Ellie can try to explain, Nick announces, “Gibbs, I told Ellie to call you about the hooker hours ago and she didn’t listen to me!”

“That is  _ not _ true!”

“Yes, it is!”

  
  


-

  
  


“Wait, so we’re just going to give up?” Ellie’s hair is still slightly frazzled from tackling the suspect down, strands loose on her forehead and around her ears. She ran up and down four flights of stairs to catch her, but they’ve been given an order to push the case to another day with another lead. “What about Sugar Honey?”

“We can’t catch anyone higher up the food chain if she doesn’t consent to wearing a wire.”

“So sneak one on her!” The Director raises his eyebrows.

“Bishop.” She snaps around, eagerly awaiting Gibbs’s cowboy orders. “Go home. Get some sleep.”

“What? I can’t believe you’re actually agreeing with this.”

“Ellie,” Nick says, coming to her supposed rescue. There’s a flicker of hope in her eyes, and he hesitates to kill it. But he has to. He stands up, and immediately yelps and whines. Guiltily, he savors the look of concern she gives him. “Actually, could you drive me home? I think I twisted my ankle when we were chasing down Sugar Honey.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Ellie pouts. It maybe makes his stomach flutter, which is stupid, because Nick doesn’t feel things like that.

“You know me. Stoic face and all. I could get stabbed and none of you would know.”

“You know, that’s not a good thing.” She grabs his car keys from his jacket and puts his arm around her shoulders.

Bishop throws a stern look to the Director and Gibbs. Their bosses look half-confused, half-amused; Nick avoids Gibbs’s knowing look. “Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She walks him to his car. He feels warm and lonely all at once, because her phone rings two more times.

Nick plops down on the passenger seat, and Ellie wrenches the car into ignition, and says with no small amount of strife, “I know you’re lying and I’m either taking you to your apartment or back to the club. Your choice.”

Um. “Hey, let’s not do anything dangerously impulsive here.”

“Me? Impulsive? What about you?”

“What? When have I ever done anything dangerous or impulsive?”

“You stole a truck and totaled it when you were chasing down a suspect last month. Gibbs was already waiting on another block to cut him off.”

“Well, at least I didn’t get hurt.”

“You had a concussion and I had to wake you up every hour that night.”

They’re already out of the Navy Yard, almost ten over the speed limit, and going in the opposite direction of his apartment.

“Okay, I’m sorry I lied about my ankle. But Bishop.” He’s not sure how to say it, so what leaves his mouth is a sound of frustration. “You can’t dismantle the mafia with just this one case. These things take time. One Sugar Honey confession was the best we could do today. And that’s okay. But we’ll catch another one tomorrow, or maybe next week, and the week after that.”

The car slows down; Ellie’s pout becomes more pronounced. The sudden U-turn makes him clutch at the dashboard and pray for his life.

“Fine,” Ellie says. “But — ”

“Tomorrow, I will help you possibly arrest a drug dealer, that will lead us to the drug supplier, that will lead us to the boss.”

She nods, hands tightly holding the steering wheel. There’s glitter in her hair and streaks of paint on her jeans. They’ve barely slept in the past two days, driving each other insane. 

“I can take the couch for a few hours and then we’ll be on our way. We both need to rest.”

Ellie doesn’t reply.

“If you don’t crash at my place, I’ll call Gibbs and tell him you’re going back to the club.”

Ellie protests for the rest of the car ride, but Nick doesn’t budge an inch.

  
  


-

The stakeout resumes peacefully. Gibbs and Vance were right: the dealers are spooked and no deals occur for the next week.

Bishop doesn’t spend every single moment on her phone, so at least there’s that. He can’t deny the twinge of longing every time he sees her eyes brighten at the sound of another text.

Still, even that is nothing compared to the ache he feels when she yawns and rubs her eyes. It’s the type of case that makes her want to prove herself, to risk everything to accomplish her ambitions, to run after something without a thought of the consequences. He knows the feeling. He has that feeling every time a kid is involved.

So he triples the bags of junk food on the floor of the moldy apartment. He lets her rest a little more when it’s his watch. She curls up in the blanket she stole from his apartment and sighs in her sleep.

They’re both exhausted, so their prank war grinds to a halt. Nick’s exasperated, and he doesn’t reply to any of Ziva’s requests for updates. Ellie’s smile is something admirably distracting and infuriating, especially when it’s not directed to him.

-

Here’s the thing, though: Nick can’t imagine when Ellie had time to go on a date with a Mark that he’s never met or heard of in the past few weeks. Before Operation Take DiGiorno’s to Prison, they had back-to-back murders that took a total of two weeks out of their lives. Before those, Nick went to pilates with her for three consecutive weekends. So whoever this Mark is, might be special to her. Someone she wants to keep to herself. Someone she wants to talk to all day, someone she wants to smile and laugh with, someone she wants to be with. It’s that simple.

It’s just not Nick.

-

The seaman in Interrogation still isn’t talking, but at least there’s something in the cocaine.

“Local PD’s been digging up everything they can about the drug ring for months, and this little sample here matches their signature packaging and purity. But I’m telling you, whoever hired their chemists needs to do a better job, cause this stuff ain’t pure at all.”

“Can we connect it to Joey or the uncle?”

“I’m so glad you asked. We, in fact, do have a way to arrest them, thanks to Kasie — ”

“Don’t talk about yourself in the third person.”

“Okay, someone’s grumpy! DiGiorno’s olive oil company bought bulk chemicals, which are being delivered to this address. We’ve got dimethyl sulfoxide, tetrahydrofuran — ”

“English, Kasie.”

“Coke. They’re making coke. Trust me, those materials are not extra virgin.”

He grunts out a thanks and swirls around, ready to leave.

“Woooaaahhh there, son.” Kasie holds her hands out in front of her to tame him. “What’s going on with you, Nicholas?”

“What? Nothing!”

“Okay. Then I guess it has nothing to do with you and your feelings.”

“What? Nothing’s up with Bishop and me!”

“I didn’t say anything about Bishop.”

“Okay,” Nick chuckles, searching for an exit route that may or may not involve rolling past Kasie in a very ninja-like manner before booking it out of the building. “You said something, I said something, now we’re both confused, and I gotta go now, bye!”

-

McGee’s hawk eyes peer at him when Bishop retreats to the break room again. It makes Nick squirm in his seat and try to pry his gaze away from her empty desk.

“Is something going on between you and Bishop?”

“Uh, no, why, did she say something?” He crosses his arms to quell the sound of his heart.

McGee scoffs. “I mean. You guys have barely talked since you came back from the stakeout.”

“Well. I don’t need to talk to her. All the time.”

“But you do.”

Nick makes a face. Bishop strolls back into the bullpen, carefree and light, and he shuts his mouth.

“What do we got?” Gibbs says, and McGee has no choice but to brush this under the rug.

-

It’s Day Ten, more accurately Night Ten, and they’re sitting in the car, driving to the warehouse where they’ll arrest Joey and his uncle. She’s wearing a vest and he has the urge to clean his gun before a shootout. But they’ll be fine.

He glances at her tied-up hair and the clench of her jaw. His hands tighten on the steering wheel, because he wants to hold her face in his hands and tangle his fingers in her hair. He wants to tell her something he can barely admit to himself.

She says nothing. The phone doesn’t ring. He keeps driving.

-

He forgets she has a vest on. He forgets everything, really, when he sees Ellie go down in the middle of the raid, and Joey starts running away. Gibbs yells at him to call an ambulance before he and McGee chase after the idiot who shot his partner.

Nick scrambles to her side, vision blurring, and he has more trouble breathing than she does when he reaches her. “Bishop, El, you’re gonna be okay, alright?”

Ellie groans as he slices her vest open. The bullet clatters off the Kevlar.

“Nick,” Ellie’s saying. “Nick, I’m  _ fine _ .” His hands hover, barely brushing over her arms, neck, head —  _ I have to check for concussion _ — and it does nothing to reassure him, until her hands fold into his. “Nick.”

She looks at him, mouth parted, cheeks flushed. Her ribs are probably bruised, if not broken. Her hands are the only source of stability; every other part of him is shaking.

“You’re alright.”

Ellie breathes out a heavy sigh; it shakes like his legs quiver, and he has to kneel next to her. “I’m alright.”

-

Along with the DEA, they confiscate every last bit of cocaine from the warehouse, effectively crippling the crime family’s major source of money. Joey rats on every aspect of his uncle’s business for a shorter sentence. As the EMTs are wrapping her ribs up, Nick holds his hand up for Ellie to slap and says, “We took DiGiorno’s to prison!”

He offers her his arm and a ride home. She graciously accepts, and the smile is his, again, for now.

But he can’t not say anything now. She almost — she almost. There’s nothing else to say about that.

So Nick says, “So, you’re going home to Mark today? You got a hot date?”

He’ll get over that lump in his throat, that spike in his pulse eventually. She’s alive, and he’ll be fine.

He doesn’t expect her to start laughing, only to be interrupted by a wince and a tender hand on her left side. “Nick, who do you think Mark is?”

“Uh.” There’s a dark hole of miscalculation, the feeling of falling down the cliff of Being Wrong. “Your hot new date you kept texting over the past, like, five days?”

Nick rolls his eyes. “Stop laughing, you’ll make your ribs worse.”

“It’s — ” Ellie takes a deep breath and pulls out her phone. She scrolls, and Nick’s about to say something about not wanting to read her love letters to Mark when:

_ Auntie Ellie, thanks for my birthday gifts! I miss you so much. _

The voice can’t be older than five, with a light stammer and a lisp. Nick takes his eyes off the road to gape at a boy with two missing front teeth, and his heart both soars and sinks. Someone honks behind them, and he steps on the gas pedal, startled that he’s stopped at a green light.

“Well.”

“He turned four last week, and my brother’s been letting him call or text me videos every day. They’re stuck in Oklahoma and they miss me.” He can hear her shrug, the fabric of her jacket rustling against the car’s leather seat, but he keeps his eyes on the road. “I haven’t been home in almost two years.”

“I’m sorry.” It punctuates the silence that follows, leaving them both speechless, wondering, wishing.

“Were you jealous?” Ellie whispers.

“Yes.” He can’t stop himself. Not anymore. Nick floors the brake and looks at his passenger’s seat, red light shining on her, everything else dark and unimaginably lonely. “Yes.”

Ellie nods, then smiles. “Okay.”

-

They arrive the next morning together. McGee smirks at his phone. Kasie’s eyes switch between them, back and forth, before she raises an eyebrow and glares at Nick, threatening and protective. Gibbs says nothing. Nick smiles the whole morning, because he still tastes her lipstick on his teeth and feels her hair in his fingers.

-

_ To: big wuss, 10:20 _

Congratulations. You aren’t a bigger wuss than Tony.

_ To: ninja lady, 10:25 _

ha. thanks

for everything, i mean, i guess.

_ To: big wuss, 10:26 _

You’re very welcome, Nicholas.

  
  
  


_ fin. _


End file.
